The Roof Tree

by Charles Neville Buck

Now the judge ascended the bench and rapped with his gavel, and when the name of Sam Opdyke was called, heads craned, feet shuffled, and an oppressive silence fell.

Then down the centre aisle, from rear door to crescent-shaped counsel table, stalked Opdyke himself with a truculent glitter in his eyes and a defiant swing to his shoulders, though he still limped from his recent wounding. A pace behind him walked two black-visaged intimates.

He looked neither to right nor left, but held the eyes of the man on the bench, and the judge, who was slight of stature, with straw-coloured hair and a face by no means imposing or majestic, returned his glance unwaveringly.

Then at the bar Opdyke halted, with nothing of the suppliant in his bearing. He thrust a hand into each coat pocket, and with an eloquent ringing of ironmongery, slammed a brace of heavy revolvers on the table before him. The two henchmen stood silent, each with right hand in right pocket.

"I heered my name called," announced the defendant in a deep-rumbling voice of challenge, "an' hyar I be—but, afore God on high, I aims ter git me jestice in this co'te!"

Had the man on the bench permitted the slightest ripple of anxiety to disconcert his steadfastness of gaze just then pandemonium was ripe for breaking in his courtroom. But the judge looked down with imperturbable calm as though this were the accustomed procedure of his court, and when a margin of pause had intervened to give his words greater effect he spoke in a level voice that went over the room and filled it, and he spoke, not to the defendant, but to Joe Bratton the "high-sheriff" of that county.

"Dorothy flashed past him ... and a few seconds later he heard the clean-lipped snap of the rifle in a double report"

"Mr. Sheriff," he said, slowly and impressively, "the co'te instructs you to disarm Sam Opdyke an' put him under arrest fer contempt. An', Mr. Sheriff, when I says ter arrest him ... I mean to put him in ther jail ... an' I don't only mean to put him in ther jail but in a cell and leave him there till this co'te gets ready for him. When this co'te is ready, it will let you know." He paused there in the dead hush of an amazed audience, then continued on an even key: "An', Mr. Sheriff, if there's any disquiet in your mind about your ability to take this prisoner into custody, an' hold him securely in such custody, the co'te instructs you that you are empowered by law to call into service as your posse every able-bodied man in the jurisdiction of this county.... Moreover, Mr. Sheriff, the co'te suggests that when you get ready to summons this posse—an' it had ought to be right here an' now—you call me fer the fust man to serve on it, an' that you call Hump Doane and Parish Thornton fer ther second an' third men on it...."

A low wave of astonished voices went whispering over the courtroom, from back to front, but the judge, ignoring the two revolvers which still lay on the table fifteen feet away, and the livid face of the man from whose pockets they had been drawn, rapped sharply with his gavel.